3 Steps to Recycling Your Half-Finished Novels
In 2009, I was sitting Kenya in my friend’s yard, watching the chickens chase each other and drinking Kenyan chai, a strange, delicious tea that contains nicotine instead of caffeine, when I made a decision:
It was time to write the novel I’d long been avoiding.
I only had a tiny netbook computer, whose screen was about the size of my hand, but fueled by about ten cups of tea a day, I started writing my novel. One-thousand words turned into five, five-thousand words turned into ten.
Then, 15,000 words into the novel I got stuck, and everything fell apart. The novel had major structural flaws, the tea was giving me… digestive problems, and soon, I had to leave Kenya for Uganda, effectively ending my writing. Dozens of hours of work were wasted.
Or were they?
